


At Knifepoint

by PsychicAbsol



Series: Points! [8]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Blackmail, Child Abuse, F/F, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Lesbian Character, Mild Language, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4789949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicAbsol/pseuds/PsychicAbsol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“In the archaic tale of Romeo and Juliet, what was believed by the protagonists to be love turned their lives, and those of their families into what can only be described as a pure tragedy. In the tale that followed the affection between Tammy and Lexie, the only poison used was the venom in the voice of Tammy’s mother Billy, but it was just as effective…”</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Knifepoint

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Another piece of the “Point” series. Directly following the end of “Pointes”, sister piece to "At Gunpoint" (tbp).

Tammy had barely enough time to register that they weren’t alone behind the stage anymore before a hard hand clasped her leather-covered shoulder, and whirled her around so hard she felt her ankle cracking. She almost fell, and only barely managed to hold up herself upright by taking a step backwards, facing whoever had invaded her private moment with Lexie. 

She should have known before that there was only one individual who would sneak behind the stage to get a word in her ear, likely with the intensity of a megaphone and the flavor of stinging nettle. 

“Tamara.” The voice of her mother was even, but even so, it was covered in pins and needles, and stung all through her skin, her tissue, deep into her heart until every beat it took felt like a desperate try to pump all essence of life out of her, to spill it onto the floor beneath. 

“Tamara…” Her mother repeated the call of her name, whether to emphasize the threat or to catch her attention fully, Tammy was not sure. “You remember my order.” It was not a question. There had never been any question concerning Tammy’s consent, for she would have never given it. The band that was her life now was not something she would have ever willingly let her mother take from her. And that had been before the bandleader had become the focus point of her affection, the friend who, through continued support of the no-questions-asked and reciprocal kind had finally become her amorous desire. If the chance of her mother succeeding in forcing her away from all of this had been low before, it was close to non-existent by now. 

“I do, mother.” Tammy crossed her arms. She could feel the warmth Lexie was emitting still on her neck and shoulder, and she would have urged to younger girl to step out of the way of the conflict now if she didn’t have full confidence that Lexie was not only capable of dealing with fallouts of the familiar kind, but also not the damsel in distress that needed to be protected from the fire-spitting dragon at all costs. Even filled with bitter hatred for Roxie’s offspring, her mother would not openly attack her hence she risked having her skull cracked and thus the mystery of if and what was hiding behind the greasy, dark moss-colored hair she possessed. 

Billy sneered. “So it’s not your memory that is lacking rigor. Tell me, then, why I find you here, on stage with the bastard girl, playing a song which could as well have the lyrics ‘I really, really want to fuck you hard until you bleed out of your eye holes’ plastered into it when I told you in the plainest words possible that you were not to be ever even seen with her again.” She spoke at length, without slipping into yelling or even rising above a whisper. For Tammy, it was worse than being yelled at, because it was only the appetizer to what clash she should expect at home. 

Her mother, obviously aware of her own insinuation, flicked her head towards the exit sharply,. “Home. Now. We have lots of talking to do, my dear daughter.” Never had there been a fouler misuse of the words ‘dear’ and ‘daughter’ than in this moment. 

Tammy turned around, aware of the fear in her girlfriend’s eyes. She wished there was some way to put her mind at ease, some way to pledge safety, but she couldn’t without outright lying to Lexie’s face, and that was something she just couldn’t do. 

They went home in total silence, Tammy not even being allowed to fetch what little equipment she had secretly purchased in the past few years. There was a certain irony to it that had Lexie not founded the band, Tammy was sure that her mother would have welcomed her stepping in her shoes. In this regard, their mothers were all to similar, both desirous to see their children carry on of fulfill the careers they had abandoned. They really weren’t all that different, their mothers, both having their fair taste of misfortune and much in their lives, and both being forced to dig their sorry, screwed up asses out of meters of crap they had mostly hauled in themselves. The major difference had been that Roxie had been able to turn nearly every turd of shit she touched into shining, glistening gold, while her mother even failed to pay the water bills, and Roxie had known when to put the brakes on, while she still lay awake some nights, wondering if she would get a visit by the police the next morning, telling her her mother had thrown herself off a building crane in a drug boosted episode. 

Finally within the security of their own walls, Billy first jostled her son Ronny aside and into the bedroom. The boy only meekly uttered his protest, before giving in to the superior authority of his mother and falling silent as he sat down on the floor, put the blanket over his head and began playing an improvised game of petanque with his colorful glass marbles. 

Tammy had tried to brace for everything her mother could throw at her. And given that her mother had, even in their meagerly furnished house, gathered a wide assortment of things that could be misused as weapons, she had a long list of hazards to prepare for. She had been cut with scissors, gagged with lamp cords, she had had vases and cups thrown after her, full garbage bins put over her head and of course, her mother never seemed to tire of new things to beat her up with. It had been bearable when it was just flasks, cans or the good old aluminium bat behind the door. It was somehow less bearable and much more psychologically excruciating when it was her her bare hands and nails Billy beat her up with. Tammy supposed she could take the pain of something that was unanimate, since it put a sort of personal distance between her abuser and her, but when it was skin on skin, it was too much of a corruption of what physical contact between mother and daughter should be like for her to take. 

She had really, really expected Billy to beat her into a bloody pulp then. In fact, she had tensed right after closing the door behind her, only putting her back to her mother for a split second in which she wouldn’t have been surprised if the next thing she glanced at was a bloody steak blade sticking out of her abdomen. 

At first, it seemed as if Billy would deny her the inevitable, putting a cruel twist to her acceptance of fate. She just stood there in the middle of the room, underneath the swinging light bulb that hadn’t seen artificial light for weeks or even since her mother had last bribed the guy from across the street to wiretap into the municipal power cable. She stood there with her back to her daughter, as unmoving as a wax figure if not for the even up and downs of her shoulders, indicating heavy breathing. Tammy herself just stared ahead, not daring to emphasize her presence hence her mother decided to remove herself from her trance-like stance and do differently. 

The first slap came so sudden that Tammy mistook her mother’s fist for a particularly huge and nasty gnat. Still, instinct told her to close her eyes, and it was a good thing, for she nearly lost balance and fell against the ancient television, knowing it off the cabinet it had been standing on. Instead of bursting into sparks and flames, the relict of a time long gone by seemed too senile to even accomplish that. Instead, a tiny puff of air came out of interior, a last breath blown in vain. 

Tammy shook her head, re-establishing her sense of direction and balance, just in time to see her mother lunging at her again. Now, neither of them looked to be particularly physically outstanding, but that was a trait not needed when forced to fight raw. Both had enough nastiness in them- by heritage or simple experience, to gnash when it was necessary. 

Billy grabbed a sharp piece of plastic offered by the corpse of their TV set, while Tammy opted for the curtains, hoping not to be forced to strangle her mother with them. In all the fights they had went through over the past years, she had tried to stay on the defensive side of things. Surely, she had hurt her mother more than she had wanted to, many times, but it was a forced matter. It was either rolling with the painful punches, or receiving them oneself, and in this battle between survival instinct and the natural love of a child for it’s mother, the more ancient reflex won. 

Tammy blindly flipped the cloth into her mother’s face, blinding her to her position and taking flight to the left. She didn’t even know what she intended to do herself until she found her hands grasping the doorknob, desperating joggling it to no avail. Either her mother had locked them in behind her back, or the rusty lock refused to buckle under her sweaty, stressed hands. She couldn’t even truly begrudge her mother if it was the former, as they had long since established the golden rule that all entrances, even the one of their bedroom, were to be secured tightly all day long. It was not a matter of safety, but of continued survival, yet in the face of current events, this very existence of this reason mocked Tammy. 

She heard something tearing behind her, and saw that her mother had stepped on the curtains, while a part of them was still curled neatly around her head, forcing her to rip her way out of the unwanted cape. She laughed as she saw her daughter’s attempt to flee, and with one steep step, she was in front of Tammy again, pressing her against the wooden door. 

Tammy felt her mother’s forearm putting uncomfortable pressure against her ribcage, while she held the grey piece of case plastic against her throat. 

“Now we will talk, Tammy, and you will listen to me, and may Arceus himself be my witness, if you don’t obey to every word I say to you now, I swear, the TV set will be the first thing I’ll mourn and your sorry, bloody mess of pussy eating failure will be the very last thing on that list, following the cockroaches!” 

Tammy gulped, actually experiencing the sharpness against her bulging throat, and decided to stay quiet for the moment. It wasn’t that she was truly afraid of her mother- that was a feeling she had long since internalized, but she was afraid of what her mother truly could do. She could take the beating. She could take the curses, the screaming, the yelling, the spitting, all of that was nothing against the joys of life she had always cherished. And now, it felt as if all she had to think about was Lexie, and the pain was nothing more but a physical callback to how human she was, in the end. 

What she couldn’t take was the thought of dieing. And it spoke lengths about her mother’s true nature that in this moment, this was Tammy’s only true and rational fear. 

Billy took a deep breath. It reeked of a wide collection of smells, the most prominent one being whiskey and tobacco, an artificial stench of medicine added to it as an underlayer. Tammy could not remember a time when her mother hadn’t had that awful, goose bump inducing malodor on her. 

“You will not see that girl again. Ever. I don’t care of you skip school until the end of your life, change classes or if you go to another crappy institute where you brainless bloke likely belong, but you will not see her again. You will not play in that band again. And I’ll be so nice and not burn your guitar and stuff the toilet with its remains for me to crap on and let you unclog it till the morning. But you will quit the band. You’ll quit that girl. Never talk to her again.” 

She grabbed the collar of Tammy’s jacket with her free hand, and pushed it together so tightly that Tammy began to see shooting stars all around her vision. 

“I swear, if I ever see you talking to her again...if I am ever witness to you interacting with her in any way that implies contact….I will not be as nice as I am now. I will not talk it out with you. I will not even give you a chance to open your mouth before I stick my shotgun into it and pull the trigger. Talk to her again, and it will be your brain she can pick up from the roofs.” 

With a sudden, jerky movement, Billy let go of her daughter, who plainly refused to let herself fall to the ground like a bag of rice. Tammy rubbed her throat and her cheeks, finding them slightly wet. She was too upset to truly tell if it was her mother’s spit, or her own tears. 

Slowly, she stood up and straightened. For the longest time, she had refused to stand up to her mom. Partly, it had been plain survival instinct, knowing that any resistance would be lethal. Partly, because she had never seen the need. Never before had there been anything she would have risked fighting her mother for. The benefits had never outweighed the risks. Never before. 

But that had been before she had fallen in love with Lexie. 

“No, mother.” She spoke, voice clear and without the tiniest hint of fear. “You won’t make me do that.” Tammy closed her eyes. “I can take your beatings. I can take your insults. I can take everything you can throw at me. Come and try it! Try it out, and see if I care!” She almost hissed the last words, seeing as how her mother had turned into a painful caricature of a wax statue again, her back to her daughter, refusing to acknowledge her presence or her words. 

“Do whatever you seem fit to me, cut off my fingers, hands, arms, if you want to, so I can never play the guitar again. Cut off my tongue, so I can never sing again. Cut out my eyes, so I’ll be blind to the beauty of me around.” Tammy paused. “But you won’t make me quit the band or Lexie. No pain you can ever inflict on me will be worse enough that she won’t be able to make it heal.” 

For the longest moment, it seemed as if Tammy had won. Her mother just stood there, staring straight ahead. She took long, ragged breaths, consequence of a life filled with cheap cigarettes and other inhalants, before she turned around to face her daughter again. 

“So it seems as if I can’t break you anymore. What a shame.” Tammy had not noticed her actually lighting a cigarette in the short moment she had been unwatched. Callously, she let the ashes fall to the blotchy wooden floor. “And yet, I do not think I’m beaten yet, Tammy, dear.” 

Billy had heard it before Tammy had. In their hut of a house, no sound got away undetected, that much was sure. And when her little brother came scuffling out of the bedroom, blanket loosely thrown over his small shoulders, rubbing his eyes as he fought his way to the toilet, Tammy found herself smiling unconsciously at Ronny. 

Despite their upbringing, they had some of the closest connection siblings could have. In total, they hadn’t spend more than five years together, her brother having always been with Billy, while she had only recently moved in in the course of things after the custody battle between Danny and Billy. In Tammy’s mind, it had always been a caricature of a real lawsuit, being closer to a wrestling match between sedated Ursaring. No one had told her back then, for she had, in everyone’s eyes, been an innocent young girl, but she knew, she knew oh so well that neither of her parents fought for _her_. All they fought for was the child support that was floating behind her like a monetary lucky charm. That she had ended up with Billy in the end had been the consequence of her dullard of a dad popping up drugged up and slobbering in court, while her mother had only been moderately drunk. Enough that she was still able to sign the papers with a readable signature, apparently. 

From that moment on, she had taken it upon herself to educate Ronny the best she knew. Unlike her, he seemed unfit for the street life, being a meek, sickly child that likely suffered in more than one way from the constant years of alcohol abuse his mother had put him through. She had been with Ronny through every nightmare, through every illness, through every sprained ankle and broken bone, and she had helped him with his homework when mother had been away for days, and she had been the one to change the sheets when he had wet the bed, afraid of burglars who smashed the neighbour’s windows, afraid of the junkies lurking underneath their bedroom window. 

And now, she couldn’t help but smile, seeing her little brother, who had maintained what little innocence even she had to give up, in order to simply survive here. If she was all it took for him to remain even the tiniest bit sane, then she would gladly stay here, endure this shitpile of a life that had only recently offered her the tiniest nugget of hope. 

Too bad that her mother’s trail of thought was similar, yet led to another exit called hell. 

“Too bad I cannot break you…” She repeated, through her focus had switched. “But I wonder if I’ll still be able to break _him_ ….” 

“You wouldn’t dare!” Tammy found herself growling. 

“Dare what?” Billy laughed with a sneer. “I wouldn’t dare _what_? Punishing him? Hurting him? Yelling at him? All for something his insidious sister did? Oh, Tammy, you know me wrong, if you think I would shy away from blackmail. I thought I had taught you better, but obviously, I have not, if you think you can courtship that bastard kid behind my back!” She took a deep breath of musty cigarette smoke. “A blatant liar, that mother of hers is. A liar, a fraud, a bitch, a whore and an asshole. She’s everything bad rolled into one, and Arceus knows, hah, Arceus knows, I wouldn’t even care if it was just for you, ya know?” She smiled, as Ronny paused after having washed his hands, watching the exchange between his mother and his sister. “Why should I care about what kind of mishap you get yourself into? Hah, your own fault, I say, as I spit into your pathetic, wet face. But unfortunately, you are my daughter, and I would rather commit manslaughter than let anyone of my family be besmirched by that slut’s essence. So, tell me, Tammy…” Billy lowered her glance. “What is it, now? That bitch of yours, or your brother that I take from you?” 

Tammy, though not betraying it openly, knew when there was only one reasonable answer to a question. 

And she also knew when she was beaten.


End file.
